hi On 9/1/07, Johnny Rosenberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I wouldn't be surprised if Excel on the same machine (or a comparable > machine) > opens the same document in less than 5 seconds.
I believe you are current in this surmise. I have not paid attention per se to anyone opening the file, simply because I don't work on Windows boxes for the school, only GNU Linux boxes. But I don't hear that many complaints about the file loading slowly on Excel. I am going to have to test the loading speed for this file on Excel, and then I will report back to this list. I have also tried to open > big Excel files with OpenOffice. About 10-100 times longer isn't unusual, > compared to Excel. The "slowness" is one of the few things I really hate > with OpenOffice.org. Yeah, and it would be a deal-breaker with this school, as well as some really really negative branding. I don't want them to think that FOSS is trash, and these educators are really over-worked, unpaid, impatient people. They are at work no later than 6:55 in the morning, and they often stay until 6 pm in the evening, and they are expected to be available for student phone calls until 8 pm at night, and many of them do, in fact, take those calls. Of course, they have moved the school from being third from last in the district to being first or second in the district, but at a tremendous cost. > > 2. I also hope that you can convince your school to develop a database > instead of that ridiculously big spreadsheet. As someone else said, > driving > nails with screwdrivers is not a good idea, even if Calc is made 100 times > faster than today. Doing so will be my goal, but one problem is that I personally have never used OOo Base, or any other database for that matter (I am a lawyer by trade, not a technologist), and so I am going to have a huge learning curve. I am willing to learn, but doing so will take time, and in the meantime, the Borg will get its tentacles ever deeper into the school.
